Re: gEDA-user: Random thoughts on the future interface of PCB

[Kovacs Levente <leventelist@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 9 Dec 2010 21:55:37 +1100
Stephen Ecob
<silicon.on.inspiration@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

> Good, we've established that money could help to improve gEDA :)  What
> I'm *very* unsure of is whether we could raise enough to make a
> difference.  Does anyone have any idea of how many of us make
> commercial use of gEDA ?
> As a business user I face the fact that if I choose to use commercial
> EDA software such as Altium then I'll pay $4K every year for a program
> that will make me go prematurely bald as I pull my hair out in
> frustration at bugs that I have no power to fix.  I've chosen to use
> free software instead.  Yes, PCB has many shortcomings - but I'm free
> to fix them.  My business is just starting up, so cashflow is tight.
> At this stage I'm more inclined to contribute to gEDA by coding myself
> than by paying others to do it for me - but in the future I may have
> less time and more money.  At that stage paying others to improve gEDA
> would make good business sense.  I could easily justify $4K per year,
> perhaps more - businesses who use Cadence or Zuken are probably paying
> >$20K per year.  One business contributing $4K per year is almost  
> insignificant - but 10 could achieve something worthwhile, 50 could
> fund a full time developer.  But it's nothing more than a pipe dream
> unless there are others out there who think the same.
> Does anyone else think the same ?


I've decided that when I make money with gEDA, I'll give some percentage back
to the developers. I even felt a bit strange (sorry my English ends here) when
I first sold a hardware to my fellow guy for $30. "How can you ask money for
something created by free software?" Then I said that I ask money for my work.
Afterwards, I donated some to the Linux found (more than $30 :-).

In the other hand, I think we should concentrate on the priorities first. I
know it will hurt some, but.... We have 2 (or more) autorouter. I know that
they are nice, and usable, and required but we have rounding errors in the
code as well. Which is important? We have 3D view, but we don't have negative
layers. I'm sorry, if I annoy anyone. I just want you to see my point.

Levente

-- 
Kovacs Levente <leventelist@xxxxxxxxx>
Voice: +36705071002




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